NIgeria’s civil service is bloated with fake people –Oyo-Ita, Head of Service of the Federation

The Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Mrs. Winifred Oyo-Ita, spoke with journalists on various issues concerning the nation’s civil service. OLALEKAN ADETAYO was there. Excerpts

You were recently quoted as saying that the Federal Government is owing civil servants about N293bn. Has this debt been cleared?

Well, it has not been paid but the Minister of Finance is working on a way to make this payment in installments or on a monthly basis. You know, right now, we are passing through a lot of challenges with the economic recession and so on. So, we are working with the Minister of Finance and she has assured us it would be handled in installments.

One of your passions is housing for all civil servants. How far have you gone and how are we sure that this will not go the way of failed mortgages?

Well, the Federal Integrated Staff Housing programme, like I always explain, is a novel programme. This is the first time different agencies of government are coming together to work as a team to provide the necessary infrastructure, services as well as affordable housing for civil servants. So, the FISH implementation committee that I chair is made up of ministries and parastatals that are involved in the provision of infrastructure. These include the Federal Capital Territory, Ministry of Power, Works and Housing, Federal Housing Authority, the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria and the FHA Housing. These are some of the main players and we are also working with private developers in a kind of Public Private Partnership arrangement.

So far, we have discovered that apart from private developers, there are a lot of private investors who also want to be a part of this programme because of the large number of off takers, that is, the civil servants who are available to come on board the programme. Because we have seen that the programme is getting really large, we have seen so many interests, we have set up a consultative committee and that committee is made up of three sub-committees – reconstruction committee, finance and the administrative committee. So, we are using these committees to design the framework of the FISH. The essence of this framework is to institutionalise the FISH. So, this is one programme that will certainly not go the way of other housing programmes for civil servants.

The civil service is said to be the epic centre of corruption and this administration has made it very clear that it will not tolerate corruption. How have you been able to key into this agenda?

When you are told that the civil service is the epic centre of corruption, I always try to explain to people that the civil service is existing within Nigeria and already, we know that corruption is a serious plague in the Nigerian society. So, any sphere in the Nigerian society will definitely be affected by corruption, the civil service is not any different. What we are doing in the civil service under my watch is that we have identified the first key area with serious corrupt practices which is in our payroll. We have very strong reason to believe that the huge payroll of government is bloated by corrupt practices and we are looking into it. That is why we have started the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information verification programme. It started last year with the physical verification with the directorate cadre and we are taking it further. We are also working with the Ministry of Finance in this regard. The second area is in maintaining the rules and regulations and also having sanctions for those who are against these rules and regulations. The third area is to protect whistle blowers. We have had a few instances where corrupt practices have been exposed and we are making sure that the whistle blowers in the system are protected.

A former Head of Service of the Federation, Ms. Amma Pepple, said recently that SERVICOM (Service Compact with All Nigerians) specifically has failed. Do you agree with this?

I think SERVICOM like any other programme or polices of government has suffered the problem of continuity at the tempo which the originators had in mind. SERVICOM is a very good government policy which we have taken into our EPIC (to institutionalise an efficient, productive, incorruptible and citizen-centred culture), civil servant strategy ethos. It is good that the Secretary to the Government of the Federation has activated the SERVICOM programme. We are working together with the SGF and the National SERVICOM programme to reactivate the programme and build it into our civil service programme now.

In answering your question, I will say that SERVICOM has not failed the way the former Head of Service said it. I will rather say that it lost its tempo but this administration is fully committed to reactivating SERVICOM as you can see with that national workshop which we held recently at the Presidential Villa.

Still on corruption, the Senate recently queried the repetition of purchase of computers in the yearly budgets of MDAs. They asked if the old computers were usually thrown away every year. Why is this so?

You have to understand that computers are designed in such a way that they have to be upgraded and updated regularly when more efficient softwares are being developed. So, in an IT world such as ours, we need to keep abreast with what is happening in the ICT sector. And remember that many of these computers are designed in such a way that you can hardly be repairing them. In fact you find that it is cheaper and more cost effective and efficient to replace rather than try to repair memory boards and all that. So this is the reason why you may find computers recurring in our annual budget.

How are you addressing the issue of staff training? Many people are against foreign trainings and prefer the use of local training institutes. Do you agree?

Yes, the budget for training has been dropping unfortunately over the years and that is why the Ministry of Budget and National Planning found the need to streamline foreign trainings. There are a lot of training programmes that can be done effectively within Nigeria but those are very specialised and we don’t have the capacity we can justify by going outside the country by giving approvals here from the office of the head of service.

I’m happy to let you know that in the course of our launching our 2016/2019 Head of Service Strategic Plan for the federal civil service, goal number one is to develop an efficient, productive, incorruptible and citizen-centred civil service and part of that sub-goal is capacity development and training of civil service. I’m happy to let you know that Africa Initiative for Governance Foundation which is chaired by renowned banker Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede has indicated interest in coming in and helping fund some of our capacity development programmes and we have already started working with the foundation in this regard. So, this is the window whereby civil servants access funds in training in areas that are important to service delivery.

How did the culture of stealing billions of naira belonging to the government creep into the civil service? There are some involved in pension fraud.

Like I said earlier, civil servants don’t live in the moon; they are living here in Nigeria. Where there is unwholesome practice, you will also find it in the civil service. Definitely, civil servants that have been caught and are being prosecuted by security agents must have also been working hand in gloves with other corrupt people in the larger society. It is a good thing that they have been apprehended and I believe that if they are found guilty, they should be made to face the full wrath of the law and it will send signals to others that they cannot escape doing such things.

Those directors involved in pension scam, first of all, it is really heart-rendering that people will embezzle monies of old pensioners. When you think that all of us one day will become pensioners, it is really very painful. But I believe that the Pension Transition Department is working very closely with the PenCom office and the Office of the Head of Service. Mind you, the Office of the Head of Service is no longer directly involved in pension matters. In fact, we are not involved in pension matters at all.

What happens is that since we are the custodians of the records of service, service mobility and so on and so forth of civil servants, when they are retiring, we are notified, then we calculate all these and send to PenCom and PTAD as the case may be. So, the pensioners always call on us because they feel that this was their last point of service and so any problem, any issue they have, they must come to us. And we just don’t ignore them, we have to help to resolve their problems. That is why under my watch, I have set up the PenCom tripartite committee which is made up of the Office of the Head of Service, PenCom and PTAD so that as soon as we get any complaint, they immediately try to sort it out. The tripartite committee is a standing committee that works continuously and convene once in a while. They give us feedback on how far they have gone so that we can notify the pensioners. We try to avoid physically moving these pensioners up and down apart from where they are undergoing verification with PTAD and that verification is done as much as possible at the nearest geographic location to where pensioners are in order to ease their stress.

What do you have to say about the fact that there are still cases of missing files in the service when government should have adopted a full e-governance system?

I think that the e-governance system has suffered setbacks especially in the area of funding and training. And this is where I mentioned to you earlier that the African Initiative for Governance Foundation is working closely with the Office of the Head of Service. We are going to be signing a Memorandum of Understanding very soon, whereby AIG will help us to fund an automation system. The second goal in the Office Of the Head of Service 2016-2019 Strategic Plan is the establishment of Enterprise Content System which is an electronic system to maintain all records. We have started with IPPIS but we are going beyond IPPIS to our national record centre to create a full automation platform for records, correspondences, mails, files and so on. This time around, it is going to work because we are not going to be relying on budget appropriation which as you know has been quite challenging. So, this time around, I can assure you that the e-governance strategy will definitely take off and work fully.

But are you aware of cases of missing files in the civil service?

Yes. Definitely, when you are relying on doing things manually, things like this will happen. When you even look at how automation improves efficiency, you find that the less human activity is involved, the more efficient these processes become. For example, getting your international passport, in those days it was so hectic because so many people were physically involved but now that it has become a highly automated process, people do get their passports within 24, 48 hours at most. So, the problem of missing files will continue so far as we rely on doing things manually. Definitely, you will now get a lot of personalisation of issues which should not be so. So, definitely, missing files will become a thing of the past when we become fully automated in our record keeping.

Considering the economic recession we are expriencing, how do you intend to help government cut cost. Are you looking at retrenchment possibly?

Yes, there is an economic recession now but definitely retrenchment is out of it. The administration of President Muhammadu Buhari is a government that has human face. The solution is not throwing more people into the street. The solution is to look inward and see how we can provide a more efficient and cost effective way of carrying out government business. That is why goal number three of the Office of the Head of Service 2016/17 Strategy Plan is the establishment of Enterprise Development and Commercialisation Orientation. This goal has been a bit controversial because people are saying government is not supposed to be involved in business and that even if government is involved in business, it should be the parastatals. We are not saying that in the Office of the Head of Service, workers will be business men and women. Rather, we are saying that we should identify those mandates that we have in our various MDAs that can generate some forms of revenue and commercial activity that would reduce our dependence on government subventions, annual appropriations and so on. For example, in an office like the Head of Service, we are involved in a lot of capacity development activities especially our agencies. So, we are saying, why don’t we reach out and do more trainings for the public which can generate some revenue for government? These are things we are looking at. The Office of the Surveyor-General for example, produces a lot of high technical cartography maps, these are maps that can be sold to the general public, to universities, geologists, mining companies and so on, to generate revenue for that office and thereby reduce some of their dependence on yearly appropriations. So, these are the things we are looking at when we talk about enterprise culture and orientation in the service.

So, the recession is very real but the solution is not to throw out people into the streets, the solution is one, we need to clean our payroll. Our payroll is bloated because there are some fake people on the payroll. The solution is not throwing innocent people into the street. Secondly, we need to go deeper into our various mandates to see how we can develop enterprise culture and commercial orientation in various MDAs.

We still see advertisements into the civil service, is the service not over bloated because of more personnel doing less work?

The service is not bloated with real people but fake people. There are vacancies that need to be filled and must be filled. So, the advertisements are because there is a need to fill those vacancies. What we are saying is that there are fake people, people who ought not to be on the payroll, these are the people that are being screened out.

But one expects that something urgently must be done to clear the payroll of these fake people. So what exactly are you doing to erase this?

We are doing a lot in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance and the security agencies. What we will not do is to come out in the open and expose all the strategies we are using to get these various syndicates. So, we won’t tell you what we are doing or else they will go into hiding. They are the brains behind this thing and we are monitoring them closely.

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WHY WOULD A TERRORIST SUSPECT BE DETAINED AT SSS HQ CLOSE TO THE PRESIDENTIAL VILLA? IT MAY HAPPEN AGAIN IF SSS HQ IS NOT MOVED FARTHER AWAY FROM THE PRESIDENTIAL VILLA.

Undiluted truth!

One Boko Haram gunman in a cell and in handcuffs held the Nigerian Army and SSS off for four hours in sustained and heavy gunfire! Please, if you believe that crap, you will believe anything!” was it only one SSS staff on duty? jona dumbo should face the issue of security in more serious way and stop blaming people for his incompetency.

If BH suspects could be given “cell” accommodation very close to presidential abode and also close to the residential homes of some prominent Nigerians right at the SSS apex HQ,it means that our ruling class has not started telling us the truth about the security of this country.

Newton

Hmmmm.

2cents_now

Hmmmmm tales by moonlight. Original don jam fake.

Uzoh63

For me there must be conspiracy with some operatives.I cannot imagine that armed SSS will enter the cell of Terrorist instead of passing his food through the lower cut-out from his cell gate.And if he is to enter the cell they must be Two men at a time,not one armed man will open the terrorist cell without concentration and vigilance.

Echeke

And if I may Ask El Rufai and FAni kayode what business of theirs it was for them to be looking out of their windows to tape the activities of the invaders to the extent that they have it recorded, or were they privy to some first hand information that the invaders will come? Why will it be their business to make mockery of the nation and the SSS? Or is it one of those plans to discredit the government at the expense of Nigerians and the SSS officials who must have lost their lives, Yes El Rufai and Fani has rights as Nigerians to be concerned about happenings in Nigeria, but I beg to say that they are going about it as if there is more they know than we do not know, is it an act of vendetta by this crop of Nigerians in order to pull down the government of Jonathan? If I were the SSS I will call them in for a chat, when will we Nigerians learn to quit practicing impunity just because they think they are above the laws of the land? These ilks and their comments smacks off mischief and I ask again why will you very few clique want to use Nigeria and Nigerians to keep playing your dirty politics? When? God bless Nigeria

Newton

AMEN OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. GOD BLESS YOU BROS!!!

Echeke

And you too my brother. God Bless My Nigeria

yinka

You are thinking straight o. How Come the duo are monitoring the attacks.i use to know Fani lives in Lagos So how convenient that he was a hear shot away from the scene of the attacks. The DsS can choose not to tell us the full story so that the main participants can be fished out

Ido Idoje

I’m very disappointed! Journalists, ‘shine your eyes; shine your ears’ ALWAYS. Fani and Nasir said they “heard”, they “saw”. I’m still trying to read in your story what the two men “saw” or “heard”. If as a Reporter I told my Editor that I “saw” and “heard”, he/she would want to read everything, graphic details, in writing. Pls, ask both men again to tell you what they “saw”, what they “heard” so that you do not taint this NOBLE PROFESSION. Fani and Nasir, from all indications, are ever ready to play politics with anything they “see”, they “hear” for their own selfish interests.

Newton

Amen OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Most Nigerians know this two face past looters and their house close to the villa are Liars, Ask them again Ooooooooooo. Anything for their propaganda will always make them happy, stop giving them that joy to deceive the public. May God help Nigeria!!!

Ido Idoje

Pls, let’s CONTINUE TO DEMAND from the Media that they give the Public CREDIBLE reports – NOT PROPAGANDA of some so-called SOURCES who are always quick to share with the Public what they “see”, “hear”, “know” but are are actually selfish interests of their wrapped with veneer of “nationalism” and BENT ON TAKING ADVANTAGE of some acquiescing and gullible reporters to promote their devilish interests. Journalists, pls, give the facts and the discerning Public will know. Let’s keep it up, Fellow Patriotic Nigerians.

Jonah: na wa o… faka, wetin i go do nah?
Pat: shoo, no be you be president? call them soja people nah!
Jonah: this soja people sef, i dey doubt there sincerity……
He picks his phone and dials a number
PAt: who you wan call nah?
Jonah: i wan call tompolo and asari, make den call stella collect dat bullet proof bmw com carry me…ermm, us… so we go call diezani borrow her jet take comot for this place
Pat:…mstcheeeew…. stupid woman wrapper,
she slaps him on the head
PAt: gimme dat phone here, na so so woman you sabi call….useless man.
she dials the phone and gets through
PAt: Bade my pikin, good morning joo… quick, quick send ya people come area… we de hear gun dey shoot downside, e be like say our boys wey dey parti for aso drive don drunk wey den just dey shoot gun for air…..abi do quick, i wan sleep…

Newton

Am sure you have notting to do or say. Show some respect!!!

yinka

Please close your stinking skulls

Rufus

Yes sir……idiot! Na you get disqus? You know wan read rubbish you leave. Rubbish country rubbish people

Newton

What can I say here? Many are peddling lies, some are just following. The truth will be known shortly. Another opposition propaganda!!! I am hopping some day will come when opposition Party will not use lies to fight to win Election, but rather, what they can offer better than the other party to win the hearts the citizens to win Election in Nigeria. The truth is when they betray and lie about others, they also betray themselves. May God help Nigeria!!!

Demi David

The issue should not be the veracity of Femi and Nasir’ s tale but the seriousness and implications of a breach of the SSS HQ in close proximity to Aso Rock by insurgents. If the story turns out to be true, it will definitely dampen the morale of our security agencies whilst boosting the confidence level of the insurgents. Damage limitation is required from government and its concerned agencies coupled with a critical change in strategy if this war were to be won.